Why Are Ohio Republicans So Determined to Suppress the Vote?
This just makes no sense at all. The only conclusion to be reached is that the Republicans are going to do everything they can to confuse, obfuscate and ultimately suppress the vote of Ohio citizens.
Anyone who remembers the 2004 election in Ohio will recall the long lines and chaos on election day.
They implemented the early voting laws after that. Why try to go back now? Oh yeah, a Democrat won in 2008.
Ohio asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to overturn a federal appeals court’s ruling that the state must allow all voters to cast ballots on the weekend before the election, not just those in the military.
A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit sided with state Democrats and President Obama’s reelection campaign last week and said the state had not shown why in-person voting during the Saturday-Monday period should be offered to only one group of voters.
Ohio Secretary of State Jon A. Husted (R) called that an ‘unprecedented intrusion’ by federal courts. ‘We are asking the Supreme Court to step in and allow Ohioans to run Ohio elections,’ he said in a statement.
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Ohio officials said that local election boards needed the weekend to prepare for Election Day, but that military voters deserve special treatment because they can be deployed at any time.
The appeals court, however, said that local jurisdictions do not have to offer voting on the weekend, but that if they do, it must be open to all.
‘While there is a compelling reason to provide more opportunities for military voters to cast their ballots, there is no corresponding satisfactory reason to prevent non-military voters from casting their ballots as well,’ Circuit Judge Eric L. Clay wrote for two other judges.